Draft law passes Galician parliament calling for stronger Portuguese-language ties

From here in Portuguese:

The Galician parliament unanimously approved the consideration of a draft law of a popular initiative calling for greater weight of the Portuguese language in the Spanish autonomous region. 

More than 17,000 Galicians signed a petition for more "access to the wealth of the Portuguese language". The initiative now passed puts into consideration the teaching of Portuguese in Galician schools, better use of the language in Galician public institutions, transmission of TDT (Televisao Digital Terrestre) television channels from Portugal, and access to national radio frequencies from the other side of the border. 

There is still no timetable for the proposal, which advocates the introduction of the Portuguese language at all levels of education, to become law, but Xosé Carlos Morell (the proponent of the initiative, known as Iniciative Paz Andrade) believes that a four-year period would be reasonable for the implementation of Portuguese in Galician schools.

Looks like the Facebook page for the initiative is here.

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May 19, 1913: new Balkan war foreseen

Thanks to Times Machine it's easier than ever before to get the news from a century ago, and today's paper has a small blurb on page 3:

FORESEE NEW BALKAN WAR. 

Daily Chronicle Says Greece and Servia May Fight Bulgaria. 

LONDON, Monday, May 19. -- The Daily Chronicle says that the situation in the Near East has gone from bad to worse and that there is great danger of that troubled region being the theatre of another war. The Chronicle's special Balkan correspondent says he has excellent authority for stating that Greece and Servia, which did not sign the preliminaries of peace, have concluded an agreement which, it is believed, takes the definite form of a treaty, the main points of which are a common policy regarding the conquered territories and an alliance against Bulgaria. There is even danger, says the correspondent, of an immediate ultimatum to Bulgaria.

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Short story recorded in 19 Arabic dialects (so far)

Keep an eye on this page and this page on Reddit - it's a short story read in the dialects of any Arabic speakers who want to participate. 19 so far, discussion here, and probably lots more to come.

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Portuguese fifth-most used language online, Chinese very close to English

Came across an article here, apparently referencing data from the International Telecommunication Union, a UN body. After a good amount of searching on the ITU site though it turns out that the numbers do not come from there, they come from our well-known Internetworldstats, a very interesting site to visit but one that updates its numbers perhaps once a year.

French at 60 million still seems very low, and I wish they would add more languages to this top ten. Other back in 2009 was 15.1%, now it's 17.8%.

Portuguese is the fifth most "spoken" language on the internet. Data provided by the International Telecommunication Union show Portuguese to have surpassed Arabic, French and German among the languages with the largest number of online users. The expansion of the internet in Brazil in the past ten years explains most of this, giving at least 83 million people using Portuguese online. The expectation is that it will surpass Japanese (99 million users), reaching fourth place. 

Other numbers:  

English: 565 million
Chinese: 510 million
Spanish: 165 million
German: 75 million
Arabic: 65 million
French: 60 million

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Chris Hadfield in Kazakhstan speaking Russian with a robe, lute and doll

Chris Hadfield is back safe on Earth and this video is exactly what the title says it is:



It's dubbed so the Russian can't always be made out but he sounds fluent. Not sure if it's functionally fluent, near-native fluent or completely fluent.

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Chris Hadfield's parting music video

Chris Hadfield has relenquished command of the International Space Station and will be returning to Earth by Soyuz tomorrow. His contribution to space PR all this time has been simply phenomenal, and this final music video may be the best so far:



Edit: Also, his final thoughts on the mission one day before returning:

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